Pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/285,224 entitled Methods and Systems for Drying Materials and Inducing Controlled Phase Changes in Substances is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
As discussed in the pending patent application incorporated herein, it is common in many industries that various materials or mixtures of materials require drying at some stage of processing. One example among many is the drying of (i.e. the removal of water from) coal and coal wash fines, often in the form of slurries, in the mining industry. Traditionally, industrial drying has been accomplished through application of direct thermal heat to bring a moisture laden material to elevated temperatures at atmospheric pressure so that the moisture will evaporate and/or boil away from the material. This approach, however, requires large amounts of energy to produce and apply the heat. This energy is usually derived from the burning of fossil or other fuels, which is not very efficient, is not generally eco-friendly, and in fact is a pollution generator in its own right. At least partially for these reasons, the burning of fossil fuels in, for example, the coal mining industry and others, to dry material such as coal wash fines is strictly regulated.
The pending patent application, incorporated above, discloses unique methods and systems for drying industrial materials without direct application of thermal energy generated by the combustion of other fuels. These methods and systems have proven themselves extremely effective and efficient for drying many substances such as slurries of coal fines and for other applications such as the desalination of seawater. There exists a continuing need, however, for the ability to control conditions within such systems finely and dynamically to maximize and maintain the efficiency of the systems as materials are dried. A further need exists for the capacity to dry materials while the materials are contained within a processing vessel rather than as they are being conveyed with an air stream moving through the system. It is to an apparatus and to methods that meet these and other needs that the present disclosure and the invention embodied therein is directed.